quote Originally posted by 2.5: Wonder whats going on in this world? Why are people so weird these days? When did this happen? I would love for you to share and discuss your thoughts, videos, writings, on these topics, theirs effect on society, causes or solutions, just a ramble, tyrade, etc.

Hello, 2.5, and hello to everyone else who has shown up here.

I just perused that 7-minute YouTube of Jordan Peterson, and my reactions about the guy are all negative. I'm with "ray b" about this guy. He's a huckster, selling some stale, recycled "Reds Under the Bed" snake oil from the second half of the 20th century. Anyone who repeats the words "Marxism" and "postmodernism" that many times in just 7 minutes can't be making any sense. He should go back to practicing clinical psychology in some real, hands-on kind of way, instead of just bloviating empty theories and generalities like someone who's only complaining about the weather.

Jordan Peterson wants to inflate Identity Politics into an enormously exaggerated boogeyman, instead of trying to think about it rationally.

The question that seems to be on 2.5's mind, time and time again, is "How did we get where we are, as a nation and as a society?"

It's a question that's explored with exceptional insight (IMO) in a recent essay in The Atlantic, from Atlantic staff writer George Packer.

quote George Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, and The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq.

George Packer is age 61. He's also written for The New Yorker, and his New Yorker bio is more revealing:

quote George Packer, a staff writer from 2003 to 2018, has covered the Iraq War for The New Yorker and has also written about the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone, civil unrest in the Ivory Coast, the megacity of Lagos, and the global counterinsurgency. In 2003, two of his New Yorker articles won Overseas Press Club awards—one for his examination of the difficulties faced during the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, and one for his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone. He is the author of several books, including “The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America,” “Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century,” and “The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq,” which was named one of the ten best books of 2005 by the New York Times and won the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award and an Overseas Press Club book award. In addition, he has written two novels, “The Half Man” and “Central Square.”

He's a man who's seen a thing or two.

I'm going to provide a link to his essay in The Atlantic. I don't think anyone would be blocked from seeing it because they are not a subscriber to The Atlantic. I think it's a "freebie."

"HOW AMERICA FRACTURED INTO FOUR PARTS"

quote People in the United States no longer agree on the nation’s purpose, values, history, or meaning. Is reconciliation possible?

George Packer for The Atlantic; July/August 2021.
https://www.theatlantic.com...our-americas/619012/

Here's how he starts:

quote Nations, like individuals, tell stories in order to understand what they are, where they come from, and what they want to be. National narratives, like personal ones, are prone to sentimentality, grievance, pride, shame, self-blindness. There is never just one—they compete and constantly change. The most durable narratives are not the ones that stand up best to fact-checking. They’re the ones that address our deepest needs and desires. Americans know by now that democracy depends on a baseline of shared reality—when facts become fungible, we’re lost. But just as no one can live a happy and productive life in nonstop self-criticism, nations require more than facts—they need stories that convey a moral identity. The long gaze in the mirror has to end in self-respect or it will swallow us up. Tracing the evolution of these narratives can tell you something about a nation’s possibilities for change. Through much of the 20th century, the two political parties had clear identities and told distinct stories. The Republicans spoke for those who wanted to get ahead, and the Democrats spoke for those who wanted a fair shake. Republicans emphasized individual enterprise, and Democrats emphasized social solidarity, eventually including Black people and abandoning the party’s commitment to Jim Crow. But, unlike today, the two parties were arguing over the same recognizable country. This arrangement held until the late ’60s—still within living memory. The two parties reflected a society that was less free than today, less tolerant, and far less diverse, with fewer choices, but with more economic equality, more shared prosperity, and more political cooperation. Liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats played important roles in their respective parties. Americans then were more uniform than we are in what they ate (tuna noodle casserole) and what they watched (Bullitt). Even their bodies looked more alike. They were more restrained than we are, more repressed—though restraint and repression were coming undone by 1968. Since then, the two parties have just about traded places. By the turn of the millennium, the Democrats were becoming the home of affluent professionals, while the Republicans were starting to sound like populist insurgents. We have to understand this exchange in order to grasp how we got to where we are. The 1970s ended postwar, bipartisan, middle-class America, and with it the two relatively stable narratives of getting ahead and the fair shake. In their place, four rival narratives have emerged, four accounts of America’s moral identity. They have roots in history, but they are shaped by new ways of thinking and living. They reflect schisms on both sides of the divide that has made us two countries, extending and deepening the lines of fracture. Over the past four decades, the four narratives have taken turns exercising influence. They overlap, morph into one another, attract and repel one another. None can be understood apart from the others, because all four emerge from the same whole. The first narrative: Free America Call the first narrative “Free America.” In the past half century it’s been the most politically powerful of the four. Free America draws on libertarian ideas, which it installs in the high-powered engine of consumer capitalism. The freedom it champions is very different from Alexis de Tocqueville’s art of self-government. It’s personal freedom, without other people—the negative liberty of “Don’t tread on me.” The conservative movement began to dominate the Republican Party in the 1970s, and then much of the country after 1980 with the presidency of Ronald Reagan . . .

Packer discusses the narratives of the "four Americas", starting with Free America, followed by Smart America, Real America, and finally, Just (as in "Justice") America.

These nuggets appear in larger-sized text:

quote Rather than finding new policies to rebuild declining communities, Republicans mobilized anger and despair while offering up scapegoats.

quote The winners in Smart America have lost the capacity and the need for a national identity, which is why they can’t grasp its importance for others.

quote Trump’s populism brought Jersey Shore to national politics. The goal of his speeches was not to whip up mass hysteria but to get rid of shame. He leveled everyone down together.

"How America Fractured Into Four Parts" has been adapted from George Packer’s new book, "Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal."

"How America Fractured Into Four Parts" pegs the Read-o-Meter at almost a full hour (57 minutes) for an average reader to plow through it attentively from top to bottom. So, kind of a "bad boy", as these online reads go, in terms of length. But I think its length is its virtue, in terms of responding to the question of "How did we get here?"

There are no photographs or images, other than some vaguely virtue signaling artwork like this:

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 01-13-2022).]

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 01-13-2022).]

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Question wonder and be wierd
are you kind?

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Question wonder and be wierd
are you kind?

[This message has been edited by 2.5 (edited 01-13-2022).]